"Prying" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Poems, so different from each other in their character,—the first prying with an awful scepticism into the darkness of another world, and the second breathing all that is most natural and tender in the affections of this,—were also written at this time, and have never ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... very time. "After a stormy interview with Napoleon," says Lucien, "I at once went into the cabinet where Bourrienne was working, and found that unbearable busybody of a secretary, whose star had already paled more than once, which made him more prying than ever, quite upset by the time the First Consul had taken to come out of his bath. He must, or at least might, have heard some noise, for enough had been made. Seeing that he wanted to know the cause from me, I took up a ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... abdication, &c., sold by auction by Leigh and Sotheby, in May, 1809, 8vo. Only 806 articles; but a singularly curious and elegant collection; the catalogue of which I strongly recommend to all 'curious, prying, and inquisitive' bibliomaniacs. The first half of the ensuing year, 1810, was yet more distinguished for the zeal and energy—shall I say MADNESS?—displayed at BOOK-AUCTIONS. The sale of Mr. Gough's books excited an unusual ferment among English antiquaries: but the sale of a more extensive, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... such things. I've heard about men prying into each other's private affairs, pretending to be friends when they were enemies, and using scandal for business ends. Lilas Lynn is my friend—at least in a way—and Mr. Hammon is my host, just as he is yours. Oh, I know; this isn't a conventional party, and I'm not here as a ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... country much blood, millions of money, and a record of disgrace; but it gave a Regiment of Massachusetts Yankees opportunity to whittle up for their home cabinets of curiosities a large pile of walnut timber which had formed John Brown's scaffold, and to make extensive inroads in prying with their bayonets from the walls of the jail in which he had been confined pieces of stone and mortar. Guards were put upon the Court House in which old John heard his doom with the dignity of a Cato, at an early date, or it would have been hewn to pieces. A ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... he said, "and you may have been mistaken, for the light is waning fast. It were ill for anyone I caught prying about here. But come in, sir knight; my hovel is not what your lordship is accustomed to, but we may as well talk there as here ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... ran. The barn stood very close to uncleared woodland, and the banks ending the woodland showed a decidedly rocky exterior. Appleman, chasing a woodchuck one day, had seen him scurry into a hole in this rocky surface, and prying away with a handspike had unloosed a small mass of rock and discovered a cave; not much of a cave, it is true, but one of at least twenty feet in length and eight or ten in breadth, and full six feet in height. This discovery occurred a year or ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... heavy and as she went on it became heavier. She meant to carry it slung across her shoulder on a stick as soon as she was well away from the prying eyes of Echo's inhabitants. Later, if she felt tired, she could easily hide it behind a bush along the road and send one of her father's cowboys after it. The road was very dusty and carried the wind-blown traces of automobile tires. Some one would surely ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... prying dark lantern and his prodding nightstick, soon reached the space under the table, and the ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... yelled the enraged man. "What right have you to be prying into my affairs? I hired you to do copying work for me, not to roam about ...
— The Young Firemen of Lakeville - or, Herbert Dare's Pluck • Frank V. Webster
... atmosphere so dense with clouds that it is conceded that her time of rotation and the inclination of her axis cannot be determined. She revealed one of the grandest secrets of the universe to the first seeker; showed her highest beauty to her first ardent lover, and has veiled herself from the prying eyes of later comers. ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... me full, Gangs of the prying gull That shriek and scrabble on the riven hatches! For roar that dumbed the gale, My hawse-pipes guttering wail, Sobbing my heart out through ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... the corner of the chapel while the others prayed. Every pulse tightened—her whole nature leapt again in defiance. She seemed to be holding something at bay—a tyrannous power that threatened humiliation and hypocrisy, that seemed at the same time to be prying into secret things—things it should never, never know—and never rule! Yes, she did understand ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to approach Ruth. Ruth had been courteous, but distant. She wanted no prying into her affairs; no seekers after confidences; no discoverers of her identity. For gossip spreads, and one does not know what spot ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... luxury it was to be alone—to know that no prying eyes looked upon her grief; no harsh voice, with unfeeling common-place, tore open the deep wounds of her aching heart, and ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... of Sunnyside, Was known as a taster, far and wide; Picking and licking, spying and prying, Each bottle and dish with her fingers trying. Dangerous practice! dreadful little fact is! Once almost poisoned, and very near dying. Little Miss Baster, of Sunnyside, Has got some poison in paper tied; Harmless she deems it, yes, she must taste, Like sugar seems it, ah! but 'tis paste. ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... and in the midst of them he thought his mother sat before him. Her head was bent; an all-eating shame was crimsoning her pale cheek. Then he knew that other eyes were upon her, looking into her heart, prying deep down into her dead past, keeping open the heavy eyelids that could never sleep. He looked up; his own shadow was silently gazing down upon both ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... who had brought his master's boat round and moored her cunningly under the lee of the rocks overhung by the Keg of Butter Battery. There, while the weather held, the Commandant and his guest could slip away without fear of prying eyes and sail off among the islands—as they had sailed off yesterday, Vashti sitting low and covering herself with a spare-sail, until beyond sight of St. Lide's quay and the houses on the slope. To be sure they had to reckon ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... hand into a basin of water, which stood by her, and muttering between her teeth some words, which I could not hear, she threw some water in my face, and exclaimed, in a furious tone, "Wretch, receive the punishment of thy prying curiosity, and become ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... ones even come to our islands. It is there, far from the prying eyes of their own Sagoths, that they practice their religious rites in the temples they have builded there with our assistance. If you live among us you will doubtless see the manner of their worship, which is ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... considered, a remarkable characteristic was that I hated, as I still do, with all my soul, gossip about other people and their affairs; never read even a card not meant for my eyes, and detested curiosity, prying, and inquisitiveness as I did the devil. I owe a great development of this to a curious incident. It must have been about the time when I first went to college, that I met at Cape May a naval officer, who roomed with me in ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... begin flapping again, you may continue your stalk, but at the slightest noise, the noble buck will be off like a flash of lightning. You should never go out in the forest with white clothes, as you are then a conspicuous mark for all the prying eyes that are invisible to you. The best colour is dun brown, dark grey, or dark green. When you see a deer has become suspicious, and no cover is near, stand perfectly erect and rigid, and do not leave your legs apart. The 'forked-parsnip' formation of the 'human form divine' ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... there are tales enough told of his chats with child-maids in the Park, to ascertain the amounts of their wages, and with lounging footmen in Grosvenor Square, to learn how many guests had dined at a house the day previous. His curiosity seemed bent upon prying into small things; for secrets that involved serious matters he appeared to care nothing. "Pooh, pooh, Sir, don't tell me; I happen to know!" That phrase was continually coming ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... and bids the cloudy mists recede. Prepar'd already, Jove the nymph had chang'd, And in a lovely heifer's form she stood. A shape so beauteous fair,—though sore chagrin'd, Unwilling Juno prais'd; and whence she came, And who her owner asks; and of what herd? Her prying art, as witless of the truth, To baffle, from the earth he feigns her sprung; And straight Saturnia begs the beauteous gift. Embarrass'd now he stands,—the nymph to leave Abandon'd, were too cruel;—to deny His wife, suspicious: shame ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... the end of the board with the mallet, and then he got the wedge under and pried. Ruth pulled. Stephen kept hammering and prying, and Ruth held on to all he gained, until they slipped the wedge along gradually, to where the board was nailed again, to the middle joist or stringer. Then a few more vigorous strokes, and a little smart levering, and the nails loosened, and one good wrench lifted ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... all that scene. After years of acquaintance with the tinker he had not yet ventured a question as to his life history. The difference of age and a certain masterly reserve in the old gentleman had seemed to discourage it. A prying tongue in a mere youth would have met unpleasant obstacles with Darrel. Never until that day had he spoken freely of his past in the presence ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... you mean by coming here and saying this sort of thing? You're becoming a perfect old woman. You spend your whole time prying into other people's affairs. ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... Angel of Plague be at hand, and he, more mighty than armies, more terrible than Suleyman in his glory, can restore such pomp and majesty to the weakness of the Imperial city, that if, when HE is there, you must still go prying amongst the shades of this dead empire, at least you will tread the path with ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... that, should any one come to pay Mammy a visit, it will not be suspected that you are here. You see, I took precautions for your safety, and they were not unnecessary. Some of the gentry who inhabit this island would not scruple to stick a knife into you, if they thought that you were prying into ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... his beautiful bride on her wedding night so many years before. In the next scene two servants appeared with orders to clean out and remove the old chest from the landing. Hippy and Jessica, as the two mischievous prying servants, enacted their part to perfection. Hippy carrying a broom and dust pan, did one of the eccentric dances, for which he was famous, while Jessica, armed with a huge duster, tried to drive ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... they followed a well-worn road running due north from the village. This was to conceal their true line of march from the knowledge of the curious villagers. But when they were well away from the place, and safe from all prying eyes, they swung to the east and marched straight through open country for the foot-hills, plainly in view a score of ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... reader will understand that this is done in order to darken the tumbler, and induce the bee to settle down on the honey so much the sooner. To one who understood the operation and its reason, the whole was simple enough; but it was a very different matter with men as little accustomed to prying into the habits of creatures as insignificant as bees. Had deer, or bisons, or bears, or any of the quadrupeds of those regions, been the subject of the experiment, it is highly probable that individuals could have been found in that attentive and wondering crowd, ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... the country in a perpetual state of disorder." Mr. Gayer notes [434] that the criminally disposed members of the caste take contracts for the watch and sale of mangoes in groves distant from habitations, so that their movements will not be seen by prying eyes. They also seek employment as roof-thatchers, in which capacity they are enabled to ascertain which houses contain articles worth stealing. They show considerable cunning in disposing of their stolen ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... Long engagements are fearful strains, and our social license of questionings renders them wellnigh intolerable to men and women, who naturally shrink from speaking of matters which are to them so sacred. Ray declared that she should not be harassed by any such torturing talk and prying and questioning as that which has to be undergone by almost every girl whom civilized society fancies to be engaged. She could never doubt him for an instant, he felt assured, and he—well, he couldn't begin to realize his blessed fortune at all, so she must excuse ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... good lady gospodyni!' he cried, tapping at the door. He was afraid to open it lest he should be suspected of prying ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... water-soaked equipment, his men were plodding wearily through the mud, marching slowly and steadily upon Huntsville. While Tom had been riding through the night, Mitchel's men had slept on the flooded ground between Shelbyville and Fayetteville. Now they were prying the heaving wagons from the mud holes, while the cavalry swept out on the flanks to clear the country of enemy scouts. Skirmishers were advancing through the woods and over the hills, protecting the troops, ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop
... narrated here transpired, Brandur had grown prosperous and very old—old in years and old in ways. The neighbours thought he must have money hidden away somewhere. But no one knew anything definitely, for Brandur had always been reserved and uncommunicative, and permitted no prying in his house or on his possessions. There was, however, one thing every settler in those parts knew: Brandur had accumulated large stores of various kinds. Anyone passing along the highway ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... three-legged stool, and a spinning-wheel. A caldron is suspended above a peat fire, smouldering on the hearth. There is only one window, and a thick curtain is drawn across it, to secure the inmate of the hut from prying eyes. ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... times when he had received a postal money order. But she did not know from whom the letters came, nor even whether they were sent from the city or from some other town. Winkler received other letters now and then, but his landlady was not of the prying kind, and she had paid very ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... seen with great uneasiness what he called the liaison of des Lupeaulx with Madame Rabourdin, and his silent wrath on the subject was accumulating. He had too prying an eye not to have guessed that Rabourdin was engaged in some great work outside of his official labors, and he was provoked to feel that he knew nothing about it, whereas that little Sebastien was, wholly or in part, in the secret. Dutocq was intimate with Godard, ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... I say all kinds of news, no—I make a mistake, it is only such news as is of an exciting or startling nature to break up the monotony of life. Hence those indiscreet questions which provoke answers more indiscreet still; those rash revelations made by thoughtless young ladies, those prying efforts to discover things which only exist perhaps in their own imagination, and of which they should ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... were cleared of weeds, the walks and flower-beds laid out with care, and then the neighbors looked to see her cut away a few of the multitude of trees which had sprung up around her home. But this she had no intention of doing. "They shut me out," she said, "from the prying eyes of the vulgar, and I would rather it should be so." So the trees remained, throwing their long shadows upon the high, narrow windows, and into the large square rooms, where the morning light and the noonday heat seldom found ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... that he looks like a Canary at a little distance, but not when you are near by," said the Doctor. "The Canary has a short, thick, cone-shaped bill suited to cracking seeds, while the Yellow Warbler has the slender bill necessary for prying into small cracks and crannies for insects. This Warbler also has light rusty streaks on his yellow breast. Do you remember having ever seen, a Canary ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... Other prying ingenious Men make other conjectures, as to this mazing Controversy thus Vossius delivers himself; The Antients cannot be reconcil'd, but I rather incline to their opinion who think Bucolicks were invented either by the Sicilians or Peloponesians, for both those ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... ought to follow his fellow down the mysterious river that defines the boundary between the known and the unknown, and charge him professionally till his soul has fled, and then charge a per diem to the county for prying into his internal economy and holding an inquest over the debris of mortality. I therefore hail this movement with joy and wish to encourage it in every way. It points toward a degree of enlightenment which ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... existence of both has a personal interest inasmuch as they prove that Luis de Leon was enabled to carry out a long cherished design by means of which he hoped, as he declared at Valladolid, to counterbalance the indiscreet prying of Fray Diego de Leon. La Perfecta Casada (1583) and De los nombres de Cristo (1583-1585) likewise have their roots in Scripture. La Perfecta Casada is avowedly based on the thirty-first chapter of Proverbs, ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... men walked back, without interchanging another word, to the gate of the manor-house. Tyrrel opened it with a swing. Then, once within his own grounds, and free from prying eyes, he sat down forthwith upon a little craggy cliff that overhung the carriage-drive, buried his face in his hands, and, to Le Neve's intense astonishment, cried long and silently. He let himself go with a rush; that's the Cornish nature. Eustace Le Neve sat ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... unfortunately fell into the company of a man who, under the pretence of being his most zealous friend, became, though perhaps unwittingly, the instrument of his utter ruin. For his appearing ever disconsolate and melancholy gave the countryman an opportunity of prying into the cause of his concern, which he soon discovered to be the narrowness of his circumstances. As we naturally find ease in communicating our afflictions to others, so Johnson was ready enough to inform him of the ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... the fact that it was not Smerdyakov, but Mitya, who had committed the murder, though he might have been expected to feel the opposite. He did not want to analyze the reason for this feeling, and even felt a positive repugnance at prying into his sensations. He felt as though he wanted to make haste to forget something. In the following days he became convinced of Mitya's guilt, as he got to know all the weight of evidence against him. There was evidence of people of no importance, Fenya and her mother, for instance, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... leading to marriage. That, she would have admitted, was a woman's natural destiny, but one didn't pick a husband or lover as one chose a gown or a hat. One went along living, and the thing happened. Chance ruled there, she believed. The morality of her class prevented her from prying into this question of mating with anything like critical consideration. It was only to be thought about sentimentally, and it was easy for her to so think. Within her sound and vigorous body all the heritage of natural human impulses bubbled ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Latham, and William Hepworth Dixon. But few in the South realized the importance of supplying the North with correct information about actual conditions. The letters and reports, they thought, humiliated them; inquiry was felt to be prying and gloating. "Correspondents have added a new pang to surrender," it was said. The South was proud and refused to be catechized. From the Northern point of view, the South, a new and strange region with strange customs and principles, was of course, not to be considered as quite normal and ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... my own again once more, As doubtful that my former trance Could not as yet be o'er. A slender girl, long-haired, and tall, Sate watching by the cottage wall. The sparkle of her eye I caught, Even with my first return of thought; For ever and anon she threw 810 A prying, pitying glance on me With her black eyes so wild and free: I gazed, and gazed, until I knew No vision it could be,— But that I lived, and was released From adding to the vulture's feast: And when ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... had carried her domestic discipline to excess, had paid dearly for it, and no doubt was desisting and would henceforth desist from that kind of thing. Enough allowance can hardly be made in our day for the delicacy society felt about prying into one of its own gentleman or lady member's treatment of his or her own servants. Who was going to begin such an ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... and he felt quite satisfied that the two boys would never be seen at Cormorant Crag again. Some accident would happen to them—what accident was no business of his, he argued. They had got themselves into a terrible mess through their poking and prying about, and they must put up with the consequences. They might have fallen off the cliff when getting sea-birds' eggs, or they might have been carried away by one of the currents when bathing, or they might have been capsized and drowned while they ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... had come to look for a letter which she believed had arrived for me from Germany. Good, brave Amante! Not a word about me. M. de la Tourelle answered with a grim blasphemy and a fearful threat. He would have no one prying into his premises; madame should have her letters, if there were any, when he chose to give them to her, if, indeed, he thought it well to give them to her at all. As for Amante, this was her first warning, but it was also her last; and, taking the candle out of her ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... myself pleased with your passion; confident of your integrity, and so well convinced of my own discretion, that I should not hesitate in granting you the interview you desire, were I not overawed by the prying curiosity of a malicious world, the censure of which might be fatally prejudicial to ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... a garden with its gate; behind extended an orchard planted with leafless saplings, with a water-mill. The orchard-wall was low and could be scaled with relative facility; no danger threatened; there were neither prying neighbours nor dogs; the nearest house, a marbler's workshop, was more than ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... emigrants went forward, driving their heavily laden wagon by day and sleeping at night by the camp. After they had passed the region of roads and bridges they had to literally hew their way; cutting down bushes, prying their wagon out of bog-holes, building bridges or poling themselves across streams on rafts. But, in defiance of every obstacle, they ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... dawn by a glorious white burst of early sunshine. As a rule, the excellent soul liked to lie abed till the last available moment; but that morning she was up with the sun. When dressed she drew a letter from a secret casket with manifold precautions as though she were surrounded with prying eyes, and, placing it in her reticule, hastened forth to seek the little lonely disused churchyard by the shore. She afterwards remarked that she could never forget in what agitation of spirits and with what ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... few scattered jewels, the sly old dog has spirited away his vast stealings! My work was all in vain, save the vengeance!" And the oily Ram Lal, in the zenana, drew a willing beauty of Cashmere to his bosom, and hid his face from the chatterers of street and shop. He was safe from all prying eyes ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... They stood looking in this way for some minutes; at last, in a whispering voice, the Owl said, 'What are you who presume to look into my repose? Pass on upon your way, and carry elsewhere those prying eyes.' ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... molecular inquiry,' with stars in place of atoms, mighty spheres in place of 'dust,' 'the firmament above' instead of 'the firmament beneath.' In fact, the astronomer, in sweeping with his telescopic eye the 'blue depths of ether,' is, as it were, some Lilliputian inhabitant of an atom prying into the autumnal structure of some Brobdignagian world of saw-dust; organised into spiral and other elementary forms, of life, it may be, something like our own. The infinite height appears, in short, like the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... had distorted and ruined his life as an artist, she had saddened his life as a man. Now he believed that he might have produced the most remarkable works, if he had not known that little woman who crushed him with her weight. Her silent censure, her prying eyes, that narrow, petty morality of a well-educated girl, blocked his course and made him turn out of his way. Her fits of temper, her nervous attacks, made him lose his bearings, belittling him, robbing him of his strength for work. Must he always live like this? The thought of the ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... left together, and were soon driven by the advancing sun to the deep shade of a lime-avenue, which, starting from the back of the house, ran for half a mile through the park. Here they were absolutely alone. Lady Mary's prying eyes were defeated, and Helena incidentally remarked that Mrs. Friend, being utterly "jacked up," had been bullied into staying in bed ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... companion, "and a famous one, Mr. Renault, for he drove certain wild cattle at a headlong gallop from the pastures at Saratoga—he and I and another drover they call Dan'l Morgan. We have been strolling here among these graves, a-prying for old friends—brother drovers. We found one drover's grave—a lad called Cresap—hard by the arch there ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... the dead. Tryon waggled the levers to no avail, then flung himself out of the car and got busy with the crank. Not a move. Druro then got out and had a go at the crank. No good. Thereafter, the two made a thorough examination of the beast, but poking and prying into all its secret places booted them nothing. As far as the eye of man could see, nothing was wrong with the thing but sheer obstinacy. It was more from habit than a spirit of inquiry that Druro finally gave ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... it for prying open bureau drawers." To Bella, the maid, who appears at the door in answer to ...
— Evening Dress - Farce • W. D. Howells
... the village Mrs. Pendyce found herself, for the first time since she had begun this practice, driven by her own trouble over that line of diffident distrust which had always divided her from the hearts of her poorer neighbours. She was astonished at her own indelicacy, asking questions, prying into their troubles, pushed on by a secret aching for distraction; and she was surprised how well they took it—how, indeed, they seemed to like it, as though they knew that they were doing her good. In one cottage, where ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... "No, unless all scientific prying into things is a mistake. Women may be more likely at first to be upset than men, but they will recover their balance when the novelty is worn off. No amount of science will entirely change their emotional nature; and besides, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... twentieth time in the hour, looking, seeking—and suddenly they fell on something—a crushed and rumpled hat of her own, a milliner's masterpiece, laden with florid plumage, lying almost behind him on a couch end where some prying detective had dropped it, with a big, round black button shining dully from the midst of its damaged tulle crown. She knew that button well. It was the imitation-jet head of a hatpin—a steel hatpin—that was ten ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... a violent start, and looked down rather savagely at the adventurous child who had discovered his hiding-place. 'What d'ye come prying here for?' he ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... evening during the summer at Romford in Essex, and were known by the name of the Bowling-Green Club. These men seeing one day the character of Leviculus, the fortune-hunter, or Tetrica, the old maid: another day some account of a person who spent his life in hoping for a legacy, or of him who is always prying into other folks' affairs, began sure enough to think they were betrayed, and that some of the coterie sate down to divert himself by giving to the public the portrait of all the rest. Filled with wrath against the traitor ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... thought the matter over, he planted the tree behind his barn, saying to himself: "Prying thieves will not think to look for ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... penetrate them. The tops alone of the castle towers could be seen, and these only from a distance. Thus did the fairy's magic contrive that the princess, during all the time of her slumber, should have nought whatever to fear from prying eyes. ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... his gems, and canker'd as his coins, Came, cramm'd with capon, from where Pollio dines. 350 Soft, as the wily fox is seen to creep, Where bask on sunny banks the simple sheep, Walk round and round, now prying here, now there, So he; but pious, whisper'd first ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... that the story of the captain's adventure was already pretty well known in the public places of the town, and as a visit of the marshal from Boston was a very extraordinary event in a place usually so quiet, a prying character who was upon the spot asked him if he was not looking for Captain E——. Upon receiving an affirmative reply,—"That's the man," said he, "you have just spoken to." The marshal started in pursuit and the captain had called ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... of rest and security is one's own room! How instinctively in grief or joy one turns to it, to hide from prying eyes one's inmost thoughts, one's hopes, ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... it an easy matter to turn me from prying into his private affairs. I had just been reading my paper. "Shall Autocrats Rule Us?" was the subject of the editor's heavy work for the evening and it stirred me up. That fellow used "strong and powerful" language, as our dominie used to say when he was preaching and got two feet away from ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... either of these plans. If I fired the cannon it would bring a posse of curious, prying people to the island, and probably I should be taken away to St. Peter Port upon a coroner's quest. If I buried the man I should always shun that part of the island, and should have a constant memorial of ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... tombs, crumbled to a powder when the sepulchres were opened. The contact of life and death is too unsympathetic. Whatever stuff the writer be made of, it seems inevitable that he should suffer injury from exposure to the busy and prying light of subsequent life, after his ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... fly away with that prying wench of a Deliverance Dobbins!" ejaculated M. Picot, stamping about. "Oh, I'll cure her fanciful fits! Pish! Pish! That frump and her fits! Bad blood, Ramsay; low-bred, low-bred! 'Tis ever the way of her kind to blab of aches and stuffed stomachs that were well ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... trunk, and could supply Pilar with materials. The next afternoon they set to work. They established themselves in the middle of a great meadow, committing thereby an extreme act of trespass, and making their way to it over a ditch, a low wall, and through a blackberry hedge. Here no prying eye would annoy them, their sole and most discreet spectator being Fido, and he was ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... Avoid all prying; what you're told, keep back, Though wine or anger put you on the rack; Nor puff your own, nor slight your friend's pursuits, Nor court the Muses when he'd chase the brutes. 'Twas thus the Theban brethren jarred, until ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... lower surface of the ceiling. After floors and ceilings are out, it is a simple matter to loosen all paneling and remove it in large units. Wherever possible whole room-ends go intact. The stairway is also taken out as a unit, especially the more elaborate one in the front hall. Prying loose the old wide flooring is a difficult operation. The original hand-wrought nails have rusted fast and if too much leverage is used, the boards split. Men used to such work salvage the old flooring ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... contrite tear, For past faults to atone— For wasted talents, misspent life, She's gone before God's throne! Prying that wilful, wayward heart That leaned on gods of clay, For calmer, holier death than hers With solemn ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... allow this herd of I don't know what to call them, to incommode her with their senseless clamor. I protest, she is nearly fainting; she has been gasping for breath the last five minutes. Be off, ye fussy, curious, prying, peeping, pressing-round fellows; or, I promise you, you shall be visited with his majesty's ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... did write that letter? What does it prove but what I say,—that somebody has been prying and spying into my affairs? How came the colonel by it, if not ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... was casting about, as though eager to find some place of concealment where they could stow the ship away and so prevent prying eyes from making a disastrous discovery—disastrous at least to those plans upon which Jack was depending for the successful ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... now was of deeper rage, and came in greater volume. Between his clinched teeth the naked one cursed fiercely, and then, as though to avoid further questions, burst into a fit of coughing. Trembling and shaking, he drew the canvas cloak closer to him. But at no time did his anxious, prying eyes leave the ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... take it, I suppose I must give it to you," said Mrs. Chatterton, with evident reluctance handing the box designated, very glad to think she had but a few days before changed the jewels to another repository to escape Hortense's prying eyes. In making the movement she gave a sweeping glance out the window. Should she dare to scream? Michael was busy on the lawn, she knew; she could hear his voice talking to one of the ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... were really confessors, appointed for every block, to inquire of all—young and old—concerning the most intimate details of their lives. The printed catechism given to these confessors was so indelicate that it was suppressed in later years. These prying inquisitors found opportunity to gain information for their superiors about any persons suspected of disloyalty, and one use they made of their visitations was to urge the younger sisters to be married to the older men, as a readier means of salvation than union with men of their own age. That ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... identification of the epiglottis, too deep insertion of the laryngoscope must be carefully avoided lest the spatula be inserted back of the arytenoids into the hypo-pharynx. 8. Exposure of the larynx is accomplished by pulling forward the epiglottis and the tissues attached to the hyoid bone, and not by prying these tissues forward with the upper teeth as a fulcrum. 9. Care must be taken to avoid mistaking the ary-epiglottic fold for the epiglottis itself. (Most likely to occur as the result of rotation of the patient's head.) 10. ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... into the king's presence, he would, after all, have most satisfactorily accomplished his mission; and he forthwith proceeded, with all the craft and subtlety of which he was master, to urge upon them the desirability of an immediate visit to king M'Bongwele, who, averse as he was to the prying visits of strange men, would, he assured them, be highly gratified at the honour of having as his guests the four Spirits ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... a former husband or an admission of a pseudonym. Aunt M'riar was glad to accept matters as they stood, merely disclaiming excessive astonishment and suggesting that she might easy have guessed that Mrs. Prichard had been married more than once. She was not—she said—one of the prying sort. But she was silent about the cause of her amazement; putting the name in a safe corner of her memory, to grapple ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... fanciful and poetic in the notion of this change taking place mysteriously in the darkness, when all the doors are locked and barred—for the atmosphere about the vats is death—as if nature would suffer no idle prying into her mystic operations, and as if the grand transmutation and projection from juice to wine had in it something of a secret and solemn and awful nature—fenced round, as it were, and protected from vulgar curiosity by the invisible halo of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... signal BARELY AUDIBLE in the speaker WITH the VOLUME control FULL ON. A small snap button cap is located in the end of the receiver case beside the antenna lead connection. Remove the snap button cap by prying with ...
— Delco Manuals: Radio Model 633, Delcotron Generator - Delco Radio Owner's Manual Model 633, Delcotron Generator Installation • Delco-Remy Division
... prying civilian!" he panted at me, as he swayed this way and that with the pull of my body. "You shall have your wish, by G—! You want to see inside, ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... out a boat to examine the strange craft, and report upon her character. Jones saw her coming, and resolved to throw her off the scent. Accordingly, by skilful seamanship, he kept the stern of the "Ranger" continually presented to the prying eyes in the British boat. Turn which way they might, be as swift in their manoeuvres as they might, the British scouts could see nothing of the "Ranger" but her stern, pierced with two cabin windows, as might be the stern of any merchantman. Her sides, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... the treasures which the Romans had hidden. The Caesars became to them magical man-gods. The poet Virgil became the prince of necromancers. If the secrets of Nature were to be known, they were to be known by unlawful means, by prying into the mysteries of the old heathen magicians, or of the Mohammedan doctors of Cordova and Seville; and those who dared to do so were respected and feared, and often came to evil ends. It needed moral courage, then, to face and interpret fact. Such brave men as Pope ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... ravine became distinctly audible. By some fancy of Judge ——, who built it, the house had no less than seven outside entrances. At intervals I would hear burglars at one of the doors, then at another, nearer or more remote: the prying of levers, the sound of boring, the stealthy footsteps, the carefully-raised window, the heavy breathing of an intruder. Then came the appalling sense of some strange presence, where no outward indication of such presence could be perceived, followed by gliding shaddos revealed by the occasional ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... of coughing made Pierre turn, and he started on perceiving Cardinal Sarno, whom he had not heard enter. Standing in front of that map, he felt like one caught in the act of prying into a secret, and a deep flush overspread his face. The Cardinal, however, after looking at him fixedly with his dim eyes, went to his writing-table, and let himself drop into the arm-chair without saying a word. With a gesture ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... it said that any Christian who passed Bojador would infallibly be changed into a black, and would carry to his end this mark of God's vengeance on his insolent prying. The Arab tradition of the Green Sea of Night had too strongly taken hold of Christian thought to be easily shaken off. And it was beyond the Cape which bounded their knowledge that the Saracen geographers had fringed the coast of Africa with sea-monsters and serpent ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... things so unpleasant. Not that I care as much about them as I used to; but still, one has to be careful. People are so prying, always wanting to know things," she glanced around nervously, "but let's not talk about them. I don't understand things yet. How did you find me, ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... our adventurer did not stay long; but something in the air of Baltimore pleased him, and he lingered about there for several weeks, prying into every thing and getting acquainted with everybody that was accessible. Among others for whom the Yankee seemed to take a liking, was a Dutchman, who was engaged in manufacturing an article for which there was a very good demand, ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... name of pieces of character, although we cannot look for very delicate characterization from the poets of a nation in which vehemence of passion and exaltation of fancy neither leave sufficient leisure nor sufficient coolness for prying observation. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... has been grossly libelled; she is vain, frivolous, and fond of admiration, but nothing more. For a whole fortnight I have been prying into her life, but I can't hit upon anything in it to give us a pull over her. The debt may help us, however. Does her husband know that she has ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... The young lady, having rummaged her pockets in vain, expressed some surprise at the loss of her purse; upon which her attendant gave indications of extreme amazement and concern. She said, it could not possibly be lost; entreated her to search her escritoir, while she herself ran about the room, prying into every corner, with all the symptoms of fear and distraction. Having made this unsuccessful inquiry, she pretended to shed a flood of tears, bewailing her own fate, in being near the person of any lady who met with such a misfortune, by ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... visit, the nature of my business, how long I intended to stay, did I have a place to stay arranged for, and if so, where and through whom. It looked for all the world as though they had something to conceal; Czarist Russia couldn't beat that for keeping track of people and prying into their business. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... room, in a white frame cottage on the hill overlooking the Spencer furnaces, Anna Klein, locked away from prying eyes, sat that same Christmas evening and closely inspected a tiny gold wrist-watch. And now and then, like Audrey, she ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... was he to meet her without envious eyes looking on; or stealthy ears of prying women, listening at keyholes to catch every word? And out on the desert, gliding smoothly along in the best hired automobile in town, where better could he give expression to those surging confidences which ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... in the morning, but must be up early, to bother the household. He was only a kind of half-uncle, after all, for he had married my father's sister; yet be assumed great authority on the strength of this left-handed relationship, and was a universal intermeddler and family pest. This prying little busybody soon ferreted out the truth of the story, and discovered, by hook and by crook, that I was at the bottom of the affair, and had locked up the donkey in the smoke-house. He stopped to inquire no further, for he was one of those testy curmudgeons with whom unlucky boys ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... thorough experimenting dissipated this illusion. Ferrier reported that after a partial ablation of the front lobes in intelligent monkeys, "instead of, as before, being actively interested in their surroundings and curiously prying into all that came within the field of their observation, they remained apathetic or dull, or dozed off to sleep, responding only to the sensations or impressions of the moment, or varying their listlessness with restless and purposeless wanderings to and fro. They ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... birds!—say where your hid retreat When the frost rages and the tempests beat; Whence your return, by such nice instinct led, When spring, soft season, lifts her bloomy head ? Such baffled searches mock man's prying pride, The God of Nature is your secret guide! While deep'ning shades obscure the face of day To yonder bench, leaf-shelter'd, let us stray, Till blended objects fail the swimming sight, And all the fading landscape sinks in night; To hear the drowsy dor come brushing by With ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... chests of plunder. She was their guardian, as it were, would have defended and befriended them to the last; and also we, the Three Black Crows and myself, had no right under heaven, nor before the law of men, to come prying and peeping into this business—into this affair of the dead and buried past. There was sacrilege in it. We were ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... difficulty in sending it crashing downward. The body plunged through the thick underbrush at the bottom of the gorge, where I knew it would be completely hidden, even in the glare of daylight, from the prying eyes of any troopers riding hard upon our track. With a branch, hastily wrenched from a near-by tree, I carefully raked over the track, so that, as far as I could determine in the dim light, all outward trace of my ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... is something in your thought you hold from me. Have the lewd, prying eyes, the slanderous mind Of public envy, spied herein some mischief? What hast thou heard? By heaven, if one foul word Have darkened the fair fame of my white dove, Naples shall rue it. Let them not forget The ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... deliberately, saying no more to the buccaroos; thus they saw he would never leave the room till they did. As he had taken his chair the first, so was the boy bound to quit it the last. The game of prying fork-tines staled on them one by one, and they took to songs, mostly of love and parting. With the red whiskey in their eyes they shouted plaintively of sweethearts, and vows, and lips, and meeting in the wild wood. From these they went to ballads of the cattle-trail ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... a little sketch of such matters as can alone concern the public in any way. Into private domestic History no person possessed of a particle of delicacy can wish to intrude. It is melancholy to witness the prying spirit that some are but too ready to cater to, for filthy lucre's sake: and grievous to reflect that the boasted immunity which makes the cottage of the English peasant, no less than the palace of the English noble, a castle—which so fences ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... were spent in searching every foot of ground, and prying even into the open vaults of several broken graves; for at first they had taken a wrong direction in the gloom. Quickly, however, seeing that he was in error, Arvina turned upon his traces, and was almost immediately successful; for ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... expectation gratified. For, whatever may be urged by Ministers, or those whom vanity or interest make the followers of ministers, concerning the necessity of confidence in our governours, and the presumption of prying with profane eyes into the recesses of policy, it is evident that this reverence can be claimed only by counsels yet unexecuted, and projects suspended in deliberation. But when a design has ended in miscarriage or success, when every eye and every ear is witness to general discontent, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... that he had been meddlesome; and he was stung with a sudden sense that it was not honorable to have pushed his questions upon Forsythe. Gifford's relentless justice overtook him. Had he not given Forsythe the right to insult him? Would not he have protected himself against any man's prying? Gifford blushed hotly in the darkness. "But not to use Lois's name,—not that! Nothing could justify ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... came a road-runner up from the lower valley, peeking and prying, and he never had any patience with the water baths of the sparrows. His own ablutions were performed in the clean, hopeful dust of the chaparral; and whenever he happened on their morning splatterings, he would depress his glossy crest, slant ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... thoroughly, and does not want a guide. We did, and had one. We both join in thanks. Do you remember a Blue-Silk Girl (English) at the Luxembourg, that did not much seem to attend to the Pictures, who fell in love with you, and whom I fell in love with—an inquisitive, prying, curious Beauty—where ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... paid no heed. Just now she cared not what the future might hold, she must get beyond all prying eyes immediately, and see what that letter contained. She ran along the sodden pathway, splashing unheedingly through the mud and snow, and repeating to herself, over and over again, that he must be living, he must be, after all. Without waiting to take off her wet shawl, and all unheeding Polly's ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... zealously, flattering such as would listen to his flattery, whispering religious twaddle into the ears of foolish women, ingratiating himself with the very few clergy who would receive him, visiting the houses of the poor, inquiring into all people, prying into everything, and searching with the minutest eye into all palatial dilapidation. He did not, however, make any immediate attempt to ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... Seraphina the remembrance of the other letter—Otto's. She rose and went speedily, her brain still wheeling, and burst into the Prince's armoury. The old chamberlain was there in waiting; and the sight of another face, prying (or so she felt) on her distress, struck ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... down the room, called down curses on the prying fools who came across the unexpected streak of copper in the failing mine, drew heart-rending pictures of his wife and family singing hymns in the street, and asked me for a drink of prussic acid. I rang the bell and ordered Rogers to give him ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... think he cared for you, dear?" asked Fanny, presently. "I don't mean to be prying, but ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... not in that Aethiopian hill, which Plinie affirmeth to burne more then all the former? And to conclude, why not in the mountaine of Vesuuius, which (to the great damage of al the countrey adioyning, & to the vtter destruction of Caius Plinius prying into the causes of so strange a fire) vomiting out flames as high as the clouds, filling the aire with great abundance of pumistones, and ashes, & with palpable darknesse intercepting the light of the sunne from al the region therabout? I wil speake, & ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... knew. The telegram came, and I—Oh," she interrupted herself, "I wasn't prying!" She was like a dog, shrinking before ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... son. I will answer when the lids of darkness come down over the prying eyes of day. In the meanwhile, know that I ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... already stated respecting the "taboo" may give some idea of how submissive and habitual is their sense of the power of the Divinity, and how entirely they conceive themselves to be in his hands; as well as what a constant and prying superintendence they imagine him to exercise ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... nor Jupiter we beg For a devouring despot, lank of leg, Of prying eye, and frog-transfixing beak; Though singly we seem weak, United we are strong to smite or scoff. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... his rifle, and alone, or followed by one attendant only, he disappeared into the forest, only to emerge therefrom at sunset. What he saw there he never spoke of. Sure it was that he must have seen strange things, for no prying white man had set foot in these wilds before him; no book has ever been written of that country that lies around the ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... role could not be made in Hendrik. Miss Wimple was distressingly sensitive for the safety of her protegee from scandalous discovery. Even she herself could not expend any considerable portion of Mr. Osgood's advance without arousing surmise and provoking dangerous prying. Besides, how should she get the money for the check?—to whom dare she confess herself in possession of it? Of course, there was a conclusive impossibility. Nevertheless, something must be done at once to put Madeline at least in travelling trim; for the things of which—to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... sill of an attic-window I found a Minie-ball. Prying it out with my knife, and holding it up to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... insinuation! She would send in her resignation at once! She would get "the boys" to write an insulting letter to Senator Slocumb,—Mrs. Baker had the feminine idea of Government as a purely personal institution,—and she would find out who it was that had put them up to this prying, crawling impudence! It was probably that wall-eyed old wife of the postmaster at Heavy Tree Crossing, who was jealous of her. "Remind her of their previous unanswered communication," indeed! Where was that communication, anyway? She remembered she had sent it to her admirer at Hickory Hill. Odd ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... thing to do was for Henry to work away at their dream of a home together—home together, however little, just four walls to love each other in, away from the gaze of prying eyes, none daring to make them afraid. How that home was to be compassed was far from clear in either of their minds; but vaguely it was felt that it would be brought about by the powerful enchantments of literature. Henry had ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... mysterious in his manner; his looks are too prying for an indifferent observer," continued young Wharton thoughtfully, "and his face seems familiar to me. The recent fate of Andre has created much irritation on both sides. The rebels would think me a fit subject for their plans should I be so unlucky as to fall into their hands. My visit to you ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... drip was eerie enough to his strained senses, waiting as he was for an event which might determine the happiness or the misery of his life. He tried to forget it and wrote diligently, putting down words whose meaning he did not stop to consider, so that he had something to show to prying eyes if such should ever glance through his papers. But the sound had got on his brain, and presently became so insistent that he rose again and flung his window up to see if he were deceived in thinking ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... the leading Patriots, and more than all, of the Marquis Fayette, their head and Atlas, who had no secrets from me, I learned with correctness the views and proceedings of that party; while my intercourse with the diplomatic missionaries of Europe at Paris, all of them with the court, and eager in prying into its councils and proceedings, gave me a knowledge of these also. My information was always, and immediately committed to writing, in letters to Mr. Jay, and often to my friends, and a recurrence to these letters now insures me against errors of memory. These opportunities of ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... designed for that object than sex. Individuals that need not unite for the birth and rearing of each generation might retain a savage independence. For them it would not be necessary that any vision should fascinate, or that any languor should soften, the prying cruelty of the eye. But sex endows the individual with a dumb and powerful instinct, which carries his body and soul continually toward another; makes it one of the dearest enjoyments of his life to select and pursue a companion, and joins to possession the keenest ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... sharpen his desire. Hardly a day passed but he appeared in what he hoped would be the irresistible form—a recently discovered fragment of Polybius, an advance copy of the forthcoming issue of "The Historical Review," the note-book of Professor Carl Voertschlaffen... One day, all-prying Hermes told him of Clio's secret addiction to novel-reading. Thenceforth, year in, year out, it was in the form of fiction that Zeus wooed her. The sole result was that she grew sick of the sight of novels, and found a perverse pleasure ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... into his own hands the keys of the gates after they had been locked; but a night came in which the portals were noiselessly opened and a band of soldiers burst into the house. They divided into parties, ranging each room in turn, prying into every recess, bursting doors that barred their entrance, stabbing the attendants, some in their sleep, others as they ran to meet the invaders. At last Hiempsal was found crouching in a servant's room; he was slain ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... have an early date: Of her beware; for all who live below Have faults they wish not all the world to know, And she is fond of listening, full of doubt, And stoops to guilt to find an error out. "And now once more observe the artful Maid, A lying, prying, jilting, thievish jade; I think, my love, you would not condescend To call a low, illiterate girl your friend: But in our troubles we are apt, you know, To lean on all who some compassion show; And she has flexile features, ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... a melodramatic tableau, I was disappointed. I had always figured the inside of the Pillar House as full of treasures, for they told tales of the old whaler's wealth. My prying eyes found it bare, like a deserted house gutted by seasons of tramps. A little fire of twigs and a broken butter-box on the hearth made a pathetic shift at domestic cheer. Minister Malden sat at one side of it, his back to me, his face half-buried in his hands. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... believed that his secret consisted in the flux which he employed to make the metal melt more readily; and it leaked out amongst the workmen that he used broken bottles for the purpose. Some of the manufacturers, who by prying and bribing got an inkling of the process, followed Huntsman implicitly in this respect; and they would not allow their own workmen to flux the pots lest they also should obtain possession of the secret. But it turned out eventually that no such flux was ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... but so well in his head as you and I be,—just pretending like. And you'm right about that Brimacott too, and I do hope that every one will let mun know that he's not welcome in Ashacombe. He's a prying man and a tale-bearing man, that's what I believe he is, and all to deceive her ladyship and keep friends with the witch. But we'll catch that mazed man for all his pretending, and there there will be two guineas for you ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue
... this more clearly than the "honor system" that came into vogue in William and Mary College. The Old Oxford system of espionage which was at first used, gradually fell into disuse. The proud young Virginians deemed it an insult for prying professors to watch over their every action, and the faculty eventually learned that they could trust implicitly in the students' honor. In the Rules of the College, published in 1819, there is an open recognition ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... thousand ruses to reach his side; but it always seemed as if he found difficulty in inducing him to listen, and he treated him like a spoiled child, whose mother gratifies his whims and at the same time suspects mutiny. Some prying persons having ventured to question the Comte de Lanty indiscreetly, that cold and reserved individual seemed not to understand their questions. And so, after many attempts, which the circumspection of all the members of the family rendered fruitless, no one sought to discover a secret so ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... perhaps they would have found the real reason of their discontent, and, turning their anger against themselves, would have done penance for having come to the exorcisms led by a depraved moral sense and a prying spirit." ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... three leagues from here. The very first evening there, we two rode out, with our cloaks about us. He likes to commune with nature, and gather curious flowers which he pastes in a book and labels with Latin names. But this time he was interested in peons, yet as he had a delicacy about prying into his host's business, we rode until we left Las Palmas behind us. His Majesty would gaze on the hills and look at the sunset, and he talked to me of a poetic calm about them which made him long for he knew not ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... Woodvale at half after one o'clock, so as to have plenty of time. That Fate, which is always prying into and disarranging the plans of us poor mortals, interfered with our arrangements an hour before the time fixed for our departure. The visitors who were to arrive in the evening came shortly after ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... the habits of the stranger; and he concurred with his informant in the opinion that there was something in his proceedings which was curious and perhaps mysterious. Still, he did not think it advisable to encourage the prying and suspicious disposition of the youth, and spoke to this effect in the reply which finally dismissed the subject. Ned ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... humiliating and servile in being forced to soap and water three times a week under penalty of having your name read out before a tittering schoolroom—Absent from Bath! It vaguely recalled medieval days and such abominations as the inspection of ears and the prying intrusion of governesses! ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... Hampton. Then he laughed. "You are like the rest, Bud. Trevors is a gentleman, and you try to make him a crook. Such a scheme as you imagine is absurd and ridiculous. And I won't go prying with ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... Adah, with rather a spiteful look at Miss Warren, "I'm glad I've not got a prying disposition. I talked with you half the afternoon and did not ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... which a stubble of beard had begun to bristle. But the girl carried an icy bucket into her shack and reinforced its forward wall with blanket and rubber coat, not as a protection against the knife-edged sharpness of the air but against prying eyes. Then she bathed ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... turn may be as ruthlessly driven from the earth by another race of yet unknown beings, of an order infinitely higher, infinitely more beloved, than we. On me, perchance, the eternal obloquy of the execution of God's doom may rest, for being the first to lead the way, with prying eye and trespassing foot, into regions so fair and so remote; but being guiltless alike in act or intention to shed the blood of any human creature, I must accept ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... effects of transplanting and a long winter journey. Seeing he was bent on making himself disagreeable, I put him into his cage again, first having to chase him all about the room to catch him, and prying him up at last from between a picture and the wall, where he had flown and settled down in his struggle to get out. For my Cheri is not in the least tame. He is an entirely uneducated bird. I have seen canaries sit on people's fingers and eat from their tongues, but Cheri flies around ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton |
